The Malta Gay Rights Movement together with Integra Foundation, Drachma, LGBT Labour and We Are welcome Minister Chris Said’s announcement with regards to proposals for the extension of hate crime legislation to include the grounds of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, colour, language, ethnic origin, religion or belief or political or other opinion.

The enactment of such legislation sends a strong message that bias motivated crime is not acceptable in a society that aims to provide equal treatment to all its citizens and offers much needed protection to a wider range of vulnerable groups. We hope that this will also be accompanied by appropriate training to the police force with respectto the identification of hate crimes, accompanying measures aimed at reaching out to potential victims and adequate data collection of such crimes.

We also commend the proposal to extend the NCPE remit beyond that based on gender and race to incorporate other grounds including gender identity and sexual orientation. This will enable NCPE to go beyond its current efforts which, when addressing such grounds have been limited to research and awareness raising. Providing that legislationis also accompanied with the additional resources required NCPE would also be able to offer support to victims of discrimination.

Maria Pisani stated: "Integra supports these new proposals. But we would like to highlight that to bring about substantive change, legislative change must be accompanied by cultural change. This requires education programs and community awareness raising to change homophobic attitudes".

Gabi Calleja said: "Such legislation has the potential to make a real difference in the lives of LGBT individuals. I hope that it will encourage individuals to come forward and seek assistance when they are victims of violence or discrimination".